WESSEX Water has dismissed claims that sewage leaked into the sea at Boscombe.

Bournemouth councillor Amedeo Angiolini said on Friday that he believed a pipe near the pier had been oozing sewage directly into the water, prompting lifeguards to erect red flags and asking swimmers to move to a different area of the beach.

A spokesman for the utility company has now, however, said what was thought to be sewage was actually water being discharged from a surface water drain outfall, which takes away run-off from streets during storms.

“What was initially thought to be sewage, was in fact silt and surface water run-off residue,” he said.

“Our sewerage network was operating normally and there is no reason to think that the discharge was of anything other than surface water, nor that it contained sewage.”

An RNLI spokesperson said the red flags were erected as a precautionary measure as it was not known at the time what the discharge contained.